There is a pair of young lions that have been wandering around Venetia for some time now that have proved extremely elusive when it comes to managing to put a collar on them, so we are all extremely excited at having finally succeeded. Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser are brother and sister and, in my opinion, are two of the most beautiful lions on the reserve. We bump into them from time to time, and the volunteer group were even lucky enough to see them hunting a kudu in front of their camp recently, but every time there is a vet on hand they disappear. We finally did it! Mungojerrie is now proudly sporting a radio-collar and so we will start to get to know the habits of this pair of youngsters.

In the photo Mungojerrie is the young lion on the right, and his father, Thunzi, is on the left.

They have been independent of their mother for over a year, but are sticking together for rather a long time for opposite sex siblings. We know they use the fence lines a lot as we often see them there. My husband has had a few encounters with them while checking our fence on his quad bike (ATV). Rumpleteaser definitely views him as prey and wastes not time in dropping down to stalk him. Being young and subordinate, it may be that they are looking to expand their territory or are simply avoiding the older, more established lions in the centre of the reserve. Now that we have a collar on Mungojerrie, we can begin to answer some of our questions.

help us and share this